Total Jobs Sputter in March While Wages Continue to Sing the Same Slow Song

As I wrote earlier today, while it may be too soon to sound the alarm, this morning’s Employment Situation Report should give us pause. The bottom line is this: only 126,000 jobs added in March and the downward revision of 38,000 jobs in February, together make for disappointing numbers. While it’s important not to put too much stock in a couple months of data—especially since February and March’s job creation numbers were likely dampened by the unusually large amount of snow that blanketed the country those two months—policymakers should be wary of any signs of any slowdown from the solid job growth over the previous year.

Other indicators make it clear that there is still ample slack in the labor market, most notably in the continuing trend of inadequate wage growth—private sector hourly wages are up only 2.1 percent over the year. The chart below looks at both private sector wages and the wages of production and nonsupervisory workers over the last several years, and it’s clear that wages according to either measure are far below target.

There was, however, one positive wage sign: a mild acceleration in quarter over quarter hourly wages. The annualized increase between 2014 Q4 and 2015 Q1 was 2.8 percent, reasonably faster than trend 2.0 percent. Despite this mild acceleration, we need to see even faster growth, and for a longer time, before we can say the economy is truly working for working people. The slow growth of private sector wages coupled with a few months of disappointing jobs growth mean that the Federal Reserve should not be thinking about tapping the brakes any time soon.

Nominal Wage Tracker

Nominal wage growth has been far below target in the recovery: Year-over-year change in private-sector nominal average hourly earnings, 2007–2015

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